I found this deflated Mylar balloon on a nature reserve this morning.
Come on, folks. It’s 2024.
I’m pretty sure your seven-year-old could celebrate their birthday without these portable natural disasters.
Why haven’t these been banned? 😒😡
The GUSTO telescope landed a few hours ago some 300 miles South of Mawson Research Station.
The mission broke the duration record for zero-pressure balloons with a total flight time of a little more of 57 days.
In the last days the balloon performed vertical excursions of great amplitude reaching altitudes as low as 53.000 feet at night and returning back to 125.000 ft during the day.
As it landed on solid place w'll see if a recovery attempt is on the plans for next season.
The #GUSTO#Telescope currently circling #Antarctica onboard a #NASA#balloon flying at 125.000 ft completed almost 16 days of flight and one and a half turns to the south pole.
So far, it has become the most successful flight of a balloon campaign marked by leaking balloons.
The mission aims to remain aloft for another 40 days before being carried away from the continent when the volar vortex disintegrates and finally sinks into the Ocean.
The balloon launch of mission 736N carrying the #GUSTO (Galactic / Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory) occurred at about 6:35 UTC on December 31, 2023.
The Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope SuperBIT launched in April on a high altitude balloon used a set of capsules which were planned to be released at intervals during the mission.
However it came down early so they dropped 2 capsules.
The telescope got destroyed on landing due to the parachute failed to release on landing.
The capsules used Raspberry PI 3B's with 5TB of SSD.
Today is the busiest #balloon post so far. I’m dropping most of the remaining day shots I’ve gone through, featuring an assortment of balloons that have already been seen and a few that haven’t. This frees me up to focus on processing the night shots, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d expected but hopefully have some spirit left in them. If I think I can salvage something from them, that’ll be Thursday’s post.
My #photography makes an appearance on Tuesdays and Thursdays while each series is ongoing. This series, #float23, is nearing an end, but you can find the other series I’ve completed (and whatever is next) at the #drybeer tag.
@Bellingcat#UFO in US military #drone footage from the middle-east demystified as a boring party #BALLOON… this really is as close as you can get to „99 red balloons…“ 🎶 🎈 - I really hope these things are not igniting the last spark to #ww3 one day… 😳
On October 14, 2023 Iwaya Inc. a balloon firm from Japan conducted a successful manned flight of their T9-III pressurized capsule to an altitude of 10.669 meters.
The pilot Akito Iwagawa (who is part of the R&D department of Iwaya) became the first person to reach such altitude in a sealed environment above the country.
The flight lasted for 141 minutes for a traveling distance of 73 kilometers from Minami to Homoto in central Hokkaido.
At the 11th hour, it’s today’s #float23 post. The subject this eve is the #balloon titled (appropriately) Nightstar, piloted by Blair Beard. Blair first earned his pilot license in 1982 and since then has trained many other pilots, his family included. Nightstar has a distinctive look, it’s defining feature is that prominent yellow star atop the tallest yellow bar of color, silhouetted against the black ‘sky’ atop the balloon.
More of my #photography on Tuesdays and Thursdays for as long as I have a series going. This series only has so much longer to go, though I have plans in place for new series’ already. You’ll be able to find all of my photo series under the #drybeer tag as I release them.